


How It Happens

by oneworldaway



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, of the "it was all just a whammy!" variety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 02:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1712504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneworldaway/pseuds/oneworldaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But Myka’s still distantly aware of the feeling of sand between her toes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How It Happens

**Author's Note:**

> When all those Pyka spoilers first started circulating, I had myself convinced that they'd just been whammied, and the cast and crew were all getting a good laugh out of faking us out. Now that we've all seen the final season...I'm still unconvinced. It was _totally_ just a whammy, right?
> 
> Unbeta'd. And written pretty quickly, but I just needed to write _something_ after that finale, you know?

This is how it happens:

The millisecond she pulls away from Pete, all of it starts to feel _off_. Like the planet has shifted just slightly out of orbit, and everything’s moved almost imperceptibly sideways. (Myka Bering is _very_ perceptive.) When Pete blinks back at her, she hears everything she’s just told him played back to her like a recording in her head, and she can’t remember saying a word of it. Where did those words come from? Why did she even start this conversation?

Then it’s gone just as quickly, like footprints on the beach washed away with the tide. (But Myka’s still distantly aware of the feeling of sand between her toes.)

Claudia rests assured that she has time to figure things out, and her family will be by her side every step of the way.

Steve has nirvana. Artie has his life in the Warehouse and his son outside of it. Mrs. Frederic has...whatever it is she’s always had.

Helena has her girlfriend and her normal, steady job - only answering the odd call to help out on a mission here and there.

Pete has Myka. Myka has Pete.

And they’ve all got the Warehouse for as long as it remains in South Dakota.

 

~

 

This is how it doesn’t:

Helena doesn’t walk into the B&B, take Myka into her arms, and kiss her - as Myka realizes, in the dead of night, some part of her has been expecting all along. She doesn’t leave Boone to come home to the Warehouse, to Myka, to live her life as an agent instead of living a lie. She doesn’t trade in her lab coat for a pair of purple gloves. She doesn’t bury Emily Lake.

Pete doesn’t find his One in some gorgeous woman who shares both his smarts and his stupid sense of humour, and settle down in a big house with their three kids. Myka doesn’t punch him in the shoulder and kiss him on the cheek when he follows up an awful joke with the news that they’re having a fourth. Pete doesn’t sit out behind the B&B, a twinkle in his eyes as he watches his children run inside to try the cookies Artie’s just finished baking. (He’s gotten much better at following Leena’s recipes successfully.) Myka doesn’t learn to love the thunderous sound of four pairs of feet stampeding into the B&B, small voices calling out for their Auntie Myka.

Myka doesn’t admit to herself, in the middle of a plane ride back to South Dakota, that it’s okay to fall in love again - that Helena isn’t Sam, and Myka isn’t Bunny anymore, and that, just maybe, it’s different when you’ve really found the right one. She doesn’t quietly contemplate asking Steve how he came out. Her hands don’t shake when she picks up the phone to call Helena; she doesn’t hang up before she’s even dialed her number.

Helena doesn’t tremble against her as Myka maps out the constellations on her skin. Myka doesn’t learn just where to press to coax that sound out of her again. Helena doesn’t bring her slowly to the realization that she never truly believed in love until they first met at gunpoint. Myka doesn’t cry out as she’s overtaken by the sense that together, they’ve become something bigger than themselves.

Myka sees this future flash before her eyes, can almost taste it - until it’s gone. The dead of night, after all, plays tricks on you. By the time she’s rolled onto her other side, the moment’s been lost to a dream. 

 

~

 

And when they walk out of the Warehouse to find Helena waiting for them, squinting against the bright sunlight, Myka doesn’t feel the air shift again as she unconsciously moves a step further away from Pete.

Helena doesn’t walk up to her, look her in the eye, and stop her dead in her tracks.

“Myka,” Helena doesn’t say, “something is _wrong_.”

Myka doesn’t already know.

 

~

 

(Helena knew to come from Claudia’s email. Claudia’s not even sure what she said.

“You asked about someone named Giselle,” Helena explains.

“Your girlfriend,” says Myka.

Helena frowns. “I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t even know any Giselle.”

Myka feels dizzy. Why does everything keep moving?

“It’s all wrong,” says Helena, her tone of voice growing more desperate. “Mrs. Frederic, can’t you feel it, too?”

“Indeed, I can,” says Mrs. Frederic, and _when did she get here?_ , whispers a voice in the back of Myka’s head. “I was wondering when you’d arrive. I’ve been affected, too. I’m aware of what’s going on, but the source of the problem is eluding my perception. You’ll have to find it and stop it on your own.”

Helena looks back at Myka, determination written across her face. Myka is so confused.

“Myka,” she whispers. “It’s going to be alright. Just hold on." 

 

 

Myka goes through the motions. Lunch at the B&B with Pete. An afternoon of inventory. Helena’s visit begins to feel like a distant memory, something that happened months ago. Maybe even a dream. 

It’s hot in the stacks today. Myka needs some fresh air. She’s too hot, and the air is so thick she almost chokes on it. The scent of fudge is sickeningly sweet.

She begins to see light dancing in strange patterns in front of her. She shuts her eyes tight as the patterns spin like a kaleidoscope. She’s way too hot, and something is tugging her sideways, into the darkness.

 

 

When she comes to, the sickening sweetness has let up. The air carries only the faintest hint of something like apples.)

 

~

 

It all happened so quickly, Myka can’t even remember being whammied. Mrs. Frederic guesses it happened shortly after they fought Paracelsus, which means it was weeks ago.

Myka feels like she might be sick. She didn’t even know she wasn’t herself all this time. They’ve seen all manner of terrifying artifacts, but this is something else. 

“What was the artifact?” asks Pete.

“A pen,” says Helena, hesitantly. She’s averting Myka’s gaze, and that’s when it clicks in Myka’s head.

“Your pen,” says Myka, gently.

Helena nods. “I found it on top of your dresser,” she says, still looking away.

“My father bought it for me at an auction last year,” says Myka. “It was a birthday present.” They lock eyes now. She remembers pulling it out of the drawer, not long after her surgery. Wondering if it would fit into Emily Lake’s hand.

“It wasn’t one of my usual writing tools,” Helena elaborates, “but it was all I could find one night when I was away from home. I hardly slept at first...after Christina.” A shadow falls over her, but only briefly. “I often found myself rising before dawn to scribble down all the ideas racing around in my head. Ways to bring her back.”

She never breaks her connection with Myka. Myka hardly dares to breathe. 

“I thought a lot about parallel universes, where people identical to us might be living out lives different from our own. If I accepted the idea of time as a fourth dimension one could move throughout using the right tools, then it was possible that more dimensions could exist alongside ours.”

“A parallel universe,” says Claudia, and Myka can already see the wheels turning in her head; she’ll have a million questions for Helena later. 

_But she’ll have to get in line_ , Myka thinks.

“It’s conceivable that as I wrote these ideas down, something else was left behind,” Helena says. “I longed to leave our universe behind for another...where Christina might still have been alive.” 

So Myka accidentally whammied herself into Pete’s arms with an artifact created by Helena. The irony is almost unbelievable.

But that artifact also brought Helena back to them, and that isn’t lost on Myka, either.

“I suppose I did find my way to a new world, in the end,” says Helena.

Myka smiles.

 

~

 

“Mykes,” he starts when she approaches him, wringing her hands. “Okay, remember that time we got whammy drunk and didn’t have sex, but I told you it wouldn’t change anything if we had, because you’re my best friend?”

“Uh-huh,” says Myka, nervously. 

“Yeah, well, high five for us not having sex, again!”

Myka bursts out laughing, relief bubbling up inside of her and spilling out. Because of _course_ they’re okay - and of course Pete isn’t secretly in love with her. As if he could keep a secret that big from her, anyway. Myka reads Pete like the books piled up in her bedroom.  

As they finish promising never to talk about all that kissing ever again, Myka spots Helena heading in their direction. Pete makes a quick exit, and Myka’s stomach does a backflip.

A day ago, their lives at the Warehouse had supposedly been coming to an end. But the Warehouse, they now know, is staying put.

And Helena walking towards her feels like a new beginning.

 

~~~

 

(When they’re all sitting in the living room later, Pete wonders aloud what their real defining moments might have been.

Claudia talks about the day she realized the Warehouse was talking to her. Pete recalls goofing off with Myka after one of their first snags, and realizing he’d stopped thinking of D.C. as his home, now that he’d found a family here. Steve’s sure as hell wasn’t the fever dream he had about literally going into Artie’s heart when he had the flu a few months back; he thinks it might’ve been some time when everything with Sykes was going on, but he glances over at Claudia and doesn’t elaborate. Artie gruffly declines to share his, smirking just a little at their protests as he pretends to read his book.

Myka takes a deep breath as they all turn towards her. Then Helena appears in the doorway, and Myka finds her words.

“When I came back to the Warehouse,” says Myka, slowly, “after...I left. I felt like I couldn’t stay because I messed up. I was probably messing up more by leaving.” She looks around the room at each of these people she loves so dearly. “But when I came back, none of that mattered anymore. I didn’t have to ask for forgiveness; you all gave it to me without question. I already knew the Warehouse was my happiest place, but that was when I started to believe that I still deserved to be here. Even if I’d made some mistakes. And those mistakes didn’t have to define me.”

She turns to see Helena still hovering in the doorway. For a long moment, her words just hang in the air.

“How ‘bout you, H.G.?” asks Claudia, breaking the silence. “What was your defining moment in the Warehouse?”

The private smile on Helena’s face morphs into her trademark smirk as she moves further into the room. “Have I ever told you about my encounter with Jack the Ripper?”

Myka listens intently, not caring if Helena’s answering honestly or not. Myka knows she’ll learn all there is to know about her soon enough.)

 

~

 

This is how it happens:

Helena neutralizes the pen, and everyone at the Warehouse goes back to normal.

Myka's late night revelation comes rushing back to her, hitting her like an eighteen wheeler. Somehow, she stays standing.

Helena doesn't run away, but she does offer Myka the space to process all that’s happened. When Myka and the others finish with their emergency inventory, she finds Helena back at the B&B, just where she said she’d be. She’s sitting at the dining room table, hands folded in her lap, waiting. She doesn't make the first move. She doesn't move a muscle.

Myka watches from the doorway and lets the moment sink in. It's taken them so long to find each other standing still.

 

 

(A year later, Pete will find his One.

Claudia will forge her own destiny before fate has time to protest. All the while, the Warehouse will whisper in her ear, private jokes that leave a mischievous smile on her face.

Artie will find his way back to Vanessa.

Steve will find nirvana for real.

Mrs. Frederic will remain ever an enigma - but they’ll love her, anyway.)

 

 

Myka doesn't ask Helena out for coffee. She _does_ put a file down on the table, pushing it towards her.

"We have a ping," says Myka. She draws a shaky breath. "Want to come?" 

Helena eyes her cautiously - hopefully. 

"Solve some puzzles?" asks Myka. "Save the day?"

A smile begins to tug at the corners of Helena’s lips. Like the sun coming up at the end of a stormy night.

"I'd like that."

Myka fights to hold back a grin.

"Come on, Wells."

 

 

They grab a couple of coffees on their way to the airport.

They save each other before they save the day.

 


End file.
